Went to get my car cleaned and vacuumed the other morning (it didn't rain immediately afterwards!!) and while I was waiting, I partook of a rag magazine...I think it was The National Enquirer. One of the main stories was about the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time. There were some interesting ones (a serial killer in CA...can't remember the name nor find the article on the their website) and some dumb ones (Burt Reynold's leading actress' agent was killed "mysteriously" after threatening the actress who ran to Burt's trailer for protection). One was really interesting though: the Tylenol poisoning of 1982. So at the time, I was 17 and really don't remember much about it. It all happened in the Chicagoland area though the bottles came from several different factories. Tylenol very quickly took $100 million in inventory off the shelves to counter this strategically random act of terror. Of course most people know that they started putting the tamper proof tabs over the bottles which are so prevalent now. It was very tragic how relatives of a victim took Tylenol from the same tainted bottle to ease their headaches and also succumbed to poisoning. A very tragic event....and unsolved to this day.
Halloween that year and for a few years afterwards was significantly less festive and really changed forever. Maybe some day we'll get back to the point where you won't have to throw out popcorn balls or check apples for razor blades....but probably not for a while yet. Fortunately I'm not going to house to house on Halloween anymore. I stopped doing that about five years ago. :-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Obviously, I was VERY young in 1982 but I remember it I think. I had not idea that that event is what impacted the halloween candy scares but I don't remember a time when we were allowed to eat popcorn balls, apples or anything not factory-wrapped.
I definitely remember the scare. It was freaky for several weeks and the . . . nothing.
It made national news at the time, and I didn't realize until later that it was just in Chicago and not nationwide.
Post a Comment